Coded Nightmares
by Tie-dyed Trickster
Summary: The contradiction is that, as awful as they are, it is not the nightmares that she fears.


She has nightmares sometimes.

This should be a given, of course - she is human, and it is a very human thing to have nightmares when one has lived a normal life, let alone the sci-fi horror her past sometimes seems to be if you look at it from the wrong angle. She has been remade by a monster, been a monster, been consumed by a monster. These are irreversible facts of her life that she cannot erase, only learn to live beyond.

She has had nightmares of these things before, has woken shaking in sweat, adrenaline contrasting with her programing, and so very glad that she'd agreed to sharing a room, if not a bed, with Krillin (and the latter is almost a lie at this point, with how often it is easier to sleep beside-). He is small and solid and full of mantras from his childhood in the monastery, with enough patience to cut through exhaustion, show her the proper lotus position again and recite chants until the thousands of years of peace woven between the words weaves into her mind as well, and the nightmares are only specters of the past trying to drag themselves into the present, insubstantial, powerless. The contradiction is that, as awful as they are, it is not the nightmares that she fears.

Because to have nightmares is to be human, utterly, irrefutably. They remind her that she is alive, even if it is not always sweet. No, the nights she dreads are the ones filled with code. She is still unsure if it is some lingering program, serving some unknown purpose, or simply another form of nightmare, the times her dreams slowly unravel into strings of binary, ones and zeros in endless strings that she thoughtlessly follows into eternity.

Waking from nightmares she must remember how not to be afraid.

Waking from the code she must remember she is human. It is her deepest, most absolute fear - that one day she will see the code in her sleep and never remember again, finally the perfect, silent 18 the first monster wanted her to be, and Lazuli's 18,her 18, her self, lost forever in strings of numbers written by one who is now dead...

It takes months before she tells him about the sleep code. The first monster, herself as a monster, the monster who consumed her, those she can talk about, can see the understanding in his eyes, her human self reflected in them. There is no loss of face in telling him of these, not when she has seen him wake as well, crying names and gathering ki to fight beings long dead, when she has shaken him awake the times she has found him folded so tight on himself it seems he fears he will fly apart into a million pieces if he looses a muscle. He is as human as she, with his own monsters, his own deaths, and he does not hide this from her. She remembers somewhat that it is a thing males do, hide their hurts, try to seem more than they are. But to her, he shows his human fear, does not lie about his mortality, and for this she can show him her own.

When she finally does, finally puts words to the numbers on the sandy edge of the island, the sun high enough for night to be a distant memory, he is quiet. Then he opens his arms and offers (and this is what she loves about him - he gives and he asks and he never, ever _takes_ and in the wake of what the first monster did to her this is more precious than any other thing she could imagine). She accepts one arm and a shoulder, leaning into them, not ready for more at this moment, and listens to him as he reminds her of plans found, blueprints given to a blue-haired scientist, one who knows kindness, who removes bombs instead of making them, who knows more than any monster could ever dream to.

Who knows how to speak the language of code and remain human.

A word is all it takes, a request in a blue-framed ear, and it is an appropriately brief job to look, to find, to explain.

To assure that, no matter what the code does, Lazuli's 18, her 18, her self will always wake up again.

And she does wake up, again and again, from nightmares and from dreams and from the blink that turns night into day. She no longer starts the night on her back, and the code comes far less frequently, banished to a back corner with the other nightmares, and this time she wakes to a nightmare that is not hers. He jerks himself awake before she can lay a hand on him, and he stares up at her, eyes a mix of terror and relief.

"We were on the island," he chokes, "I stepped on the remote wrong - it activated..."

She offers her hands and pulls him upright. "But I stepped out of range and it didn't work. You said sorry a thousand times around telling me to run..." Her fear requires distraction; his fear requires a better ending. These things they can offer each other, a calming chant, a happily ever after, a verbalized yet unspoken _'I am with you'_ that they have learned how to say over weeks and months and new joys woven in daylight and old sorrows banished by moonlight.

They are human and they are afraid, but it does not have to linger, it does not have to last. And together, they will let it leave.

OoOoOoOoO

… _not actually part of my usual K18 headcanons, more of an idea that passed by and wanted to be written down._


End file.
